Let the Crazy Child Write!: Finding Your Creative Writing Voice

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Preface

The Crazy Child

Beginning my studies the first step pleas’d me so much . . .

I have hardly gone and hardly wish’d to go any farther,

But stop and loiter all the time to sing it in ecstatic songs.

WALT WHITMAN, from Beginning My Studies,

Leaves of Grass

The Crazy Child is an aspect of your personality that is directly linked to your creative unconscious. It is the place in your body that wants to express things. It may want to tell jokes, to throw rocks, to give a flower to someone, to watch the sunset, to make up insults, to sit quietly — or to play video games. All these impulses, all the thrilling, scary, or ordinary ones, come from your Crazy Child.

The Crazy Child is also your connection to the past. Everything in your genetic history, your cultural history, your familial history, and your personal history is recorded in your body — in your nervous system. Your Crazy Child has direct access to it all. Everything you have done, and everything that has been done to you, is in its domain.

I experience my Crazy Child as energy coming up from my feet, through my torso, and up the back of my neck. It connects me to the Goddess, to God, to the earth, to space, to darkness, to my senses, to my dreams, and to sex. All the exciting and all the dark stuff simmering or roaring through my body is the Crazy Child.

Your creative unconscious, your creative source, and your Crazy Child are close cousins. I often use the terms interchangeably, but Crazy Child has the virtue of sounding playful and wild. When you address it as your Crazy Child, your creative unconscious may feel invited to come out, make itself comfortable, and start writing.

The Crazy Child’s Goal

The Crazy Child’s goal is to express itself — to have some kind of existence in the world. We spend so much of our lives telling it to behave, or to shut up and go away, that it probably feels unappreciated. The Crazy Child would like to be heard.

Writing is a safe way for this part of you to be in the world — or a relatively safe way. If your Crazy Child wants to rob a bank, writing about a robbery is more prudent than doing the robbing. If your creative unconscious has an insight that makes you feel vulnerable, you can write it in a private diary.

When the Crazy Child writes, it’s a raw, truthful part of you that reveals itself. It has not been civilized. My Crazy Child knows what is happening, in spite of all contrary messages. It knows what it’s like to live in my neighborhood, in this culture, in this time, and in my body. My Crazy Child is the real me — or at least an essential, energetic part of me.

The Crazy Child coils tension into a story, loads a poem with gripping images, unfurls a play’s or novel’s plot ratchet by ratchet, and punches up an essay’s most dramatic point. The other voices, the Writer and Editor described below, are valuable aids to writing. But the Crazy Child — your creative unconscious — is the source.

Crazy Child, Writer, Editor

The Crazy Child has two companions: the Writer and the Editor. These three voices are much the same as the Freudian id, ego, and superego, and much the same as the child, adult, and parent of Transactional Analysis. Sometimes the voices get along well, and sometimes they are unruly antagonists.

The Crazy Child is equivalent to the child or the id. The id, literally, means it — but the word has a darker flavor. Some German parents, when they want to discourage their children from going out at night, say the id is outside, just as we would say bogeyman. The Crazy Child has some of that forbidden aura.

The Editor is the superego or the parent — the should voice. It analyzes and criticizes our writing, and is intelligent, well-read, and thinks it is civilized. Its judgments can be helpful, harsh, or anywhere in between. The Editor might say you are right on schedule and doing well, or it might tell you to get a real job.

The Writer is the voice that negotiates and plans, and it strives for coherence and reason. The part I am thinking with now is the Writer, which is the same as my ego or my adult. I use it to organize this book, to plan my writing life, and to schedule my lunch breaks.

If you are reading this with your Writer, you are probably absorbing it carefully. Your Editor could be assessing it at the same time, and possibly deciding that you’re not good enough for this book, or that Let the Crazy Child Write!is too elementary or far too strange — or it’s a perfect match. Your Crazy Child will have its own feelings: it might be scared, irritated, awed, or delighted.

All aspects of writing are expressed in these voices. One of them — Crazy Child, Writer, Editor, or some combination — is chattering at every moment. When they quarrel, the Editor often tells the Crazy Child it’s stupid or shy or sappy. These quarrels can stop your writing cold.

Let the Crazy Child Write!will help your Editor and Writer understand how your Crazy Child is the vital force behind your creativity. They will learn to honor and tune in to your creative source. When they are all getting along, the Editor and the Writer respond warmly to the Crazy Child.

All You Need Is the Urge to Write

Let the Crazy Child Write!is for anyone who wants to write. You may have no experience whatsoever, or you may have written as a child and are interested in trying it again. Perhaps you keep a journal or have begun stories, poems, plays, or essays on your own.

Your job might involve some writing, such as preparing technical manuals or reports or briefs, and you are curious about creative writing. You may even have taken a class or read an inspirational guide, and now you want to explore the nuts and bolts.

All you need is the urge. Let the Crazy Child Write!will help you develop a connection between writing techniques and your unique creative source. You will learn, step by step, how to tap into your creative unconscious — your Crazy Child — and its indispensable, dynamic feel for writing.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

Let the Crazy Child Write!is meant to be read on your own or with a writing group — either way. The chapters build one upon another, so it’s useful to read them in sequence. But you don’t need to; you might learn as much by following your nose and skipping around.

Each chapter introduces a writing technique. A discussion explores the technique, an exercise gives you a taste of it, and a workshop section, which is optional, suggests how to give and receive feedback. Each chapter closes with a short writing practice that gives you experience with the technique.

Discussion

Every chapter begins by discussing a technique of creative writing. The focus is on how that technique works in conjunction with the nervous system, and why it is important to creative writing — both to writers and to readers.

Examples show how the technique functions in stories, poems, plays, and essays, and how the energy and pungency of the technique arises automatically and naturally from our creative unconscious. That mischievous Crazy Child heightens our skills because it already wields them.

The discussion will indicate what you know, but don’t understand that you know. Learning creative writing is first a matter of bringing writing techniques into awareness. They are alive and thriving in the realm of the Crazy Child.

Exercise

Every chapter presents an exercise that gives you hands-on experience with its topic. You can do the exercise on your own or, if you have a workshop, do it during a workshop meeting. Do it quickly and with as much exuberance as you can muster. Don’t worry about how well you are writing. There is no wrong way to do any of the exercises — except not to write at all.

You can do the exercise in a half hour. You can lie on your bed, prop yourself on the stairs, lean against a tree, or sit in a cafe with other people or by yourself, however you are comfortable. My favorite spot is at my local daycare center, in a tiny room painted like a magic forest.

In general, follow the method suggested by Natalie Goldberg in her book Writing Down the Bones:keep the ink flowing. If you use a computer, keep those fingers wiggling. If you use a pen, keep that pen on the page, and keep it moving.

It doesn’t matter how good the writing is. It matters only that you are writing. You’re retrieving some of the natural writing skill your creative unconscious has, and acquiring a feel for it. That’s the goal.

Workshop

You may want to wait until you feel confident as a writer before you join a workshop. You can read this book on your own and ignore the workshop sections, or you can peruse them for more information about writing.

If you’ve already written pieces you like, or if you just feel daring, consider starting a group. A workshop consists of two or more like-minded people who give each other feedback on their writing. This can be done in person, by mail, or by electronic mail. Workshops generally function best, however, when everyone is physically present.

You find out two things in workshops: how well your writing is going, and what steps to take next. These are surprisingly difficult to learn on your own. Your Editor often has too many suggestions or too many hostile judgments. A workshop will provide you with constructive insights in a way that you’ll be able to hear — even if your Editor and Writer are being contentious.

When you are ready, suggest to a suitable friend that the two of you start a workshop. If a friend doesn’t come to mind, post a note on a community bulletin board, advertise in a local paper, or make an announcement at a reading. Once you find someone, you can both invite friends.

You may be surprised how many people want to write. Decide on a regular meeting schedule and ask that members commit for a specific number of sessions. At each meeting, plan to hear everyone’s practice piece, written since the last meeting, and plan to write and listen to the exercise for the chapter you are reading.

It may take several sessions before your group gels, so be patient; the ideal is for each person to feel engaged and encouraged about writing. A workshop’s first concern is to establish a safe atmosphere. When it’s well on track everyone gets excited and stimulates better and better writing in each other. You have then created a fermenting brew.

Several ground rules, outlined on page 17, help generate this brew. I call the guidelines kindergarten rules and indeed they seem childlike, but they have a complex history. They have evolved over twenty years in my workshops and in other workshops around the country. The underlying concepts were first presented in 1973 by Peter Elbow in his book Writing Without Teachers.

The kindergarten rules constrain the Editor from giving heavy criticism that can stop people from writing. The ground rules establish a syngenetic workshop that focuses on understanding the writer’s primary impulse. The syngenetic workshop supports what each person is doing well, and cultivates each person’s unique strengths.

Practice

The practice section gives suggestions for a longer written piece that develops each chapter’s technique. The exercise gives you a quick hit and the practice expands your skill. Often the practice is an extension of the exercise. I will present several alternatives, and you should choose whichever one excites you.

The point of writing a practice piece is to solidify what you have learned before you go on to the next topic. It could take two to three hours. You might write more quickly, or you might take ten hours or more. There is nothing wrong with either.

As you write, follow the spirit of the guidelines — whether you choose one of the alternatives or devise something on your own. If you write three to five double-spaced pages, or the equivalent, you are doing enough to benefit. More is not harmful.

We need to practice a new skill many times before we can do it well. The human nervous system needs to repeat a technique some two thousand times before the skill can be performed without thought. The practice gives you a start on those two thousand repetitions.

Work Hard and Have Fun

Working with Let the Crazy Child Write!is a win-win situation. No matter how small or immense your writing career becomes, you will benefit from this book. You will discover how very interesting writing can be, and you will learn about creating detail, characters, dialogue, action, and more.

Let the Crazy Child Write!will also help you in writing letters, memoirs for your family, school papers, and even with the writing you do at your job. You will be able to write more clearly and more vividly, and enjoy doing it far more than you did before. You might also discover that you want to make creative writing an important part of your life.

Since Let the Crazy Child Write!develops basic skills and nourishes your creative source, it gives you a solid foundation for a writing career. You will discover the unique power in your own psyche and body. You will find out how well your Crazy Child can write.

Chapter 1

Image Detail

Without … playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

CARL JUNG, Psychological Types

We begin with image detail because it’s essential for strong writing, and because it’s fun. Every moment of our lives we are surrounded by sensory information — the stuff of image detail. Your Crazy Child delights in it.

An image detail is that small part of an image that sticks in our minds. The worn green fabric on the end of a diving board, the pearly scar on a lover’s neck, a piece of chewed gum in the boss’s ashtray — these are image details. We remember the object, or the person, or the feeling of an entire scene from one detail.

The details that catch your attention in life are the same ones that catch your attention as a reader, and the same ones that work for you as a writer. Much of the adventure of writing is discovering which details are most gripping for you, the observer. As you look around, some details will strike your eye, and some of these will tug at your breastbone.

You are starting a journey and it is filled with fascinating images. What about that boy leaning out of a car window with a green carnation in his teeth? What about that peculiar interview with your boss? Maybe her eyes teared up, and at the same time she unwrapped a fresh piece of gum.

Writing is largely a matter of paying attention. You need to see, hear, taste, feel, and smell details in order to write them. You might notice them instantly and choose them in a snap — because they rise unbidden from your unconscious. Or you might turn a scene over and over in your mind, getting to know it well, before you find the appropriate detail.

Either way is fine. Whether you write slowly or rapidly is simply a signal of how your Crazy Child works. It’s the part of you that feels. Those twinges and gasps are from your creative unconscious, from your Crazy Child. So are the sharp, brittle facts that come from deep inside with an utter clarity, the ones you know must be true.

The goal of Let the Crazy Child Write! is to help you establish a working relationship with your creative source. In this chapter you will be introduced to your Crazy Child, and you will become familiar with the kinds of details it sees.

How Image Detail Works

Small details provoke our minds to fill in the entire picture. Especially effective are odd or dissonant details. We remember the experience of diving when we remember the worn fabric of the diving board under our toes. We see the entire blue plate when we remember a shell-shaped chip on its edge.

These small, odd, or dissonant details work because of the close attention that is required to see them. You need to be quite near the plate to notice that shell-shaped chip in the first place. You can do this by moving close physically, or by zooming in with your imagination. The reader, by taking in your words, comes as close to the object as you are.

If you write that you had your elbow on the boss’s table when you saw that gum in the ashtray, the reader imagines being in that same position. If you write that you see a pearly scar when your cheek is on your lover’s shoulder, the reader’s cheek is there too. The reader’s nervous system is automatically present, and fills in the scene as the words are read.

This picture-making might sound rare or exotic, but it is neither. Picture-making is automatic in every human being. It is the job of the human imagination to make images. By imagination I mean more than simply dreaming something up willfully. I mean the automatic imaging process that goes on beneath our awareness.

Creating and processing images — sensations, feelings, thoughts, observations, memories — goes on all day and all night. We might notice images only a few times during the day or in the morning when we remember a striking scene from a dream. But our imagination is always busy.

An old saw about a three-legged dog states, You can’t imagine a three-legged dog running. But as soon as you read that sentence, your nervous system contradicts it — you do see that three-legged dog. And it’s running. The dog is ridiculous, clumsy, endearing, inspiring, or even oddly graceful.

You have at this moment demonstrated how the human nervous system works. Your nervous system began to register the three-legged dog, and your Crazy Child made an exact picture. Your nervous system and your Crazy Child did their everyday job. You were stimulated by an odd detail — the dog with a missing leg — and your imagination filled in the picture.

Powerful Image Details

I have already talked about small and odd details. Small, however, does not necessarily mean physically small. An image may be small only in comparison to the larger picture. On the roof of a Los Angeles nightclub is a neon martini, and in the martini is a blinking pink olive. That olive may be two feet across, but it is small compared to the cocktail glass.

Any picture that the reader can complete by imagining part of the body is also powerful. One writer uses hands to convey an image when she says the afterglow of lightning looks like fingers poking down from the sky. I instantly imagine my fingers hanging down.

The shape and motion of the fingers mimics the shape and motion of the lightning. The technical word for this comparison, using the word like or implying its use, is simile (pronounced sim-i-lee). A simile works when the image and reality both contain a similar feature. Both simile and similar come from the Latin similis, meaning like.

Homer’s rosy-fingered dawn is almost a cliché because it has been quoted so often. It’s widely quoted in the first place because it’s so appropriate. Long, thin clouds stretched across the dawn sky do look like fingers tinted with a rosy color, and the fingers reach into the day. The image fits the event.

We feel anything strongly that relates to the body. The body is, after all, where the nervous system resides, and any detail that in some way touches the body becomes vivid. When we hear of children in our cities moving their beds out of the line of gunfire, we see this clearly — very clearly. We do not have to be there.

We imagine the scene. We move the bed, with the child, in terror or in a nightly numbness. We imagine the bullets angling through the window, we hear the thudding sound and see the shards of glass — our nervous system makes sure we do this. We see the entire scene, just as we see that three-legged dog, loping awkwardly down the street.

Images Other Than Pictures

The term image applies to any sensory impression, and every sense receives and creates images. A particular smell is an image, a sound is an image, a taste is an image, and so is any particular touch. There is also an important sixth sense — the kinetic sense — that gives us images of motion and momentum.

So far I have discussed images as visual impressions — images that we see with our eyes or imagine with our mind’s eye. Images from other senses work in the same way. Small, odd, and dissonant details are vivid, and so are details that relate to the body.

What is there, then, about place that is transferable to the pages of a novel? The best things — the explicit things: physical texture. [Stories] … need the warm hard earth underfoot, the light and lift of air, the stir and play of mood, the softening bath of atmosphere that give the likeness-to-life. … .

EUDORA WELTY, Place in Fiction

Repeated Image Detail

It may be powerful to repeat an image detail. This is especially true if the detail is changed slightly when it reappears; it has a way of adding meaning to itself.

I have already repeated a few details, on pages 1, 2, and 3. That chewing gum in the boss’s ashtray might mean more on page 2 than when you first read it. It might be disgusting, instead of a curiosity — it has accrued feeling with repetition. You can forge a unique sensation by repeating a detail in a story, poem, play, or essay.

Image Detail in Stories

Linda Cohen uses image details in the following excerpts from her novel-in-progress about early twentieth-century immigrants. We can read how revealing her details are, and also, when she repeats them, how they gain power. Her main character, Rose, has just met Sal in the restaurant where Rose is waitressing:

She finally looked up into the man’s broad face. He smiled at her and a reddish-brown scar formed a little diamond under one of his eyes.

She looked away as she spoke, outside the front door as it opened again. We have very good hamburgers here. All that hair he has is frightening, she thought. I’ve never seen anyone look so much like he came right from the animals. Darwin was right. Except this man came direct from a bear.

Rose pushed past the cook’s station through the swinging doors and into the bathroom. She put down the toilet seat and sat on top of it.

The reddish-brown scar that makes a diamond is an excellent detail — small and odd. It brings me right next to Sal’s face. Cohen also shows us Sal’s hairiness, and, in the last sentence, shows an odd detail about Rose. When Rose sits on the toilet seat, it’s a purposeful action: she is using the bathroom as a place to be alone and think.

… it’s so hard to be a waitress and think at